"Restoring electric train service to Long Beach has been at the top of the LIRR's priority list," said LIRR President Helena E. Williams. "We recognize the importance of regular train service as the rebuilding effort continues in the Long Beach community and other hard-hit communities all along the Long Beach branch. Our substations, which provide the power to run trains, did not escape Sandy's wrath but our crews have worked tirelessly to restore power, clean and rehabilitate switches and signals so that we can resume service. We know customers depend on the LIRR to get back and forth to work and to reach NYC. We?re very pleased to be able to restore the service."

LIRR employees have been working day and night in the aftermath of Sandy repairing electrical substations and critical signal equipment on the Long Beach Branch. Three of the four substations along the Long Beach branch are now back in service, including one in the Long Beach LIRR yard that also sustained damage from flooding and from the release of raw sewerage from an adjacent sewage treatment plant. Repair work continues on the Oceanside substation.

On the Long Beach Branch, approximately 1,000 electrical signal components were replaced, repaired or cleaned as LIRR signal employees worked at 21 different signal instrument locations. Their work, in part, included the repair/replacement or cleaning of: over 150 transformers, 350 relays, and 73 impedance bonds, as well as hundreds of other signal components. Work crews have already repaired or replaced over 100 high voltage connections (feeder cables to power the substations and third rail) in the yard and on the branch.

The salt-water damaged 3-megawatt substations have had switches, circuit breakers, relays and other critical substation parts cleaned, repaired or replaced. (The 3-megawatt substation, which provides the 750 volts of D.C. current to the third rail to run LIRR trains, is equivalent of powering approximately 200 homes.) Additional repair work will continue on the branch and the LIRR also will be examining ways to protect power, signal and switch equipment from the type of extreme flooding caused by Sandy.